Category: Social and Political Nature
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Compensatory Afforestation – Where is the Land?
Divya Mehra It is well established that India is an ‘under-construction’ country. As a developing economy, the country invests a significant amount of its budget in new development projects that are being proposed, planned, and implemented at the regional or local level. Very often the land for development projects is taken from the forest area…
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On Seeing City Water Bodies
Fizala Tayebulla Lakes and other water bodies have been an important part of civilisation all around the world. Freshwater sources have been the cardinal for settlements historically, as these settlements required a continuous and dependable source of fresh water for subsistence. Dense network of lake ecosystems were maintained by dedicated group of people and designated…
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Living Legacies
Fizala Tayebulla Heritage is a legacy of important tangible and intangible assets passed down through the generations. An individual, a family, a community, or even a city or country could inherit a heritage property. There are three forms of heritage recognised by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO): Cultural, Natural and Mixed.…
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On the Aesthetics of Urban Nature
Vijaylakshmi Suman The vision of a world-class city comes with socially produced aesthetic criteria. It draws a distinction between the beautiful and the ugly, the visible and the invisible, the legal and the illegal as a process for the making of world-class urban improvements. According to such an aesthetic mode of governance, development projects in…
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Responsible Consumerism Comes at a Cost
Divya Mehra With growing environmental concerns around the globe, the adoption of a sustainable lifestyle has become one of the important measures to deal with environmental crises at the individual level. In simple terms, a sustainable lifestyle is an individual’s or society’s attempt to reduce its consumption of natural resources and minimize its environmental footprint.…
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Rights to a ‘World-class’ City
Ajay Immanuel Gonji In a previous blog article, I had mentioned that in many Indian cities, there exists a certain shared precarity between poor humans and non-humans in access and rights to the city, and both groups are often similarly excluded (Narayanan & Bindumadhav, 2019). In this present article, I wish to elaborate on this…
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The Geographies of Animal Display
By citing various modes of animal exhibitions, this article demonstrates some of the ways in which animals have been represented in the circuits of natural history. Kartik Chugh Reliance Industries recently announced that they are establishing what they claim to be the world’s largest zoo in Jamnagar, Gujarat. On display would be more than a…
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Urban Wetland and its Importance
Vijaylakshmi Suman World Wetlands Day is celebrated every year on 2 February to raise global awareness about the importance of wetlands for the environment and the people. This day also marks the date of the adoption of the Convention on Wetland in 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the shores of the Caspian…
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The Circulation of Toxicity Between Urban and Peri-urban Frontiers
Using a flow-based approach, this article uses the example of water in Ghaziabad in an attempt to reveal how toxicity is circulated and re-circulated between the urban and the peri-urban. Kartik Chugh Development and Peri-urbanisation Since the economic liberalization in 1991, India has experienced an upsurge in urbanization. In 2019, 34.5% of India’s total population…
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Defining ‘Urban Greenspace’
Vijaylakshmi Suman One of the aspects which I am planning to analyze for my doctoral study is how urban greenspaces are defined and understood by not just the people living around it, but also by planners and researchers. As part of the research process, I have been looking at several studies to find common definitions…
Centre for Urban Ecology and Sustainability 